The present invention relates to a vehicle location tracking device and method, and more particularly, to a vehicle location tracking device and method capable of perceiving the locations of vehicles by sharing location information between the vehicles.
A navigation system detects location information of a vehicle through GPS (Global Positioning System) information received from a GPS satellite, matches the detected location information to map information, and provides the current location of the vehicle. Furthermore, the navigation system provides various pieces of information required for operation to the vehicle's driver, the various pieces of information including the traveling direction of the vehicle, a distance to the destination, the current speed of the vehicle, an optimal path to the destination and the like.
Recently, the navigation system has been used to provide a tracking service to a vehicle's passenger. The tracking service refers to a service which assists a plurality of vehicles to exchange and share location information or path information therebetween, when the plurality of vehicles travel to the same destination.
In the conventional tracking service, however, a service center for integrally controlling the location information must be established to enable the respective vehicles to exchange the location information with each other. Moreover, a communication network of a mobile communication company, such as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), must be used to share the location information. In this case, users must pay for the use of the communication network. Furthermore, in order to use the conventional tracking service, each of the users must go through authentication to use the service.
The related art of the present invention is disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 10-2009-0055680 published on Jun. 3, 2009 and entitled “Common path finding system and method”.